‘He would be in my neighbourhood, chief. With the bin strikes we’ve had.’
‘Norman!’ he cautioned.
‘Sorry, chief,’ Potting said, blowing on his new designer glasses and wiping them with one of his shirt fronts, exposing his flabby belly.
Grace looked at Weatherley. He seemed pensive.
‘Reminds me of Blackadder, chief,’ Norman Potting suddenly said.
‘Blackadder?’ Grace queried.
‘That bit when Rowan Atkinson says, “A blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn’t there.”’
‘Your point being, Norman?’ EJ Boutwood asked.
‘My point is, young lady, that we’re being asked to identify Mr Blurry, when the only thing we can see clearly is a bin bag. Unless you’ve got better eyesight than me. Eh?’
Roy Grace looked at Weatherley. The Super Recognizer had a strange expression. As he caught the Detective Superintendent’s eye, he gave him a discreet glance. No one else in the room, other than Guy Batchelor who was looking intently at the man, could have spotted it.
96
Saturday 30 April
With none of the team having anything useful to offer on the image, Grace ended the meeting, aware that Weatherley needed to get back to London.
He led the Super Recognizer back to his office, followed by Batchelor, and the three of them sat down.
‘So, tell us?’ Grace said.
Weatherley looked awkward. ‘I can tell you it’s not DS Exton. I’m afraid the images were not brilliant, as you said. If it’s OK with you I’d like to take them back to my office and see how much further we can enhance them.’
‘Yes, we can burn them on a disk or email them to you.’
Weatherley glanced at his watch. It was 6.45 p.m. ‘Email is fine and I’ll work on them first thing in the morning.’
‘Thanks, Tim, I really appreciate your help.’
Batchelor stood up. ‘Tim, I’ll show you back out to your car. When you get to the gates the barrier will open automatically.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
As the two men left his office, Grace sat down at his desk, puzzled. Weatherley had definitely seen something in the footage, but why, he wondered, was he being so reticent?
Five minutes later he got an answer, but not the one he was expecting. A text pinged on his phone that stopped him in his tracks. It was Weatherley’s number, he recognized it from earlier.
Roy, you asked me to be discreet, which is why I said nothing after the meeting. Call me as soon as you are alone in the office.
Grace read it with growing panic. What did he mean by this? Did he mean that it was someone else he had seen here at Police HQ – or, God forbid, one of his team?
He immediately dialled Weatherley’s number, but it went straight to voicemail. He left him a message asking him to call him very urgently, and sent him a text as well.
97
Saturday 30 April
Before joining the Super Recognizer Unit, Tim Weatherley had spent seven years in the Metropolitan Police Road Policing Unit. Like most of his fellow officers during that period, he attended his share of ‘fatals’ – as collisions resulting in one or more deaths were colloquially known. And he had come to learn which vehicles stood up best in accidents, in terms of protecting their occupants. That was the reason he drove a sturdy Volvo, which he always chose from the police car pool, and insisted that his wife, who ferried their young children to school and back daily, drove them in another large slab of Volvo.
He had discovered his Super Recognizer skills whilst out on patrol, where a big part of the job was observing the occupants of passing cars, checking to see if they were known villains, or not wearing seat belts, or on their mobile phones. His colleagues began to realize, gradually, that he had an almost uncanny ability to spot wanted villains, in almost any light and even in heavy rain. It earned him the nickname Catseyes. A couple of years later, word of his abilities reached Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville who was recruiting for the Scotland Yard Super Recognizer Unit.
Now, as he followed the snaking ribbon on the TomTom on his dash, taking him away from the Sussex Police HQ, over a couple of junctions and several roundabouts, through a long tunnel, where the pelting rain momentarily stopped, and then onto the A27, he was feeling conflicted and very distracted by the footage he had just viewed.
He was as certain as he could be who the man in the video was, just from the shape of his nose and chin. The implications were immense.
The wipers swished across the screen in front of him, barely keeping up with the rain that was coming down even harder now. He was very distracted by his thoughts, and concentrating so hard on what he could see through the rain and spray of the road ahead that for some minutes he did not look in his mirrors. If he had, he might have noticed a car had followed him out of the Police HQ, and was now a discreet three vehicles behind him in the rapidly falling dusk.
He heard the ping of an incoming text and saw the screen of his phone, in the well behind the gear lever, light up. But, having attended too many accidents caused by people looking at texts whilst driving, he ignored it, despite his curiosity. He would pull over when he saw a layby and check it then, in safety, he decided. Then he yawned.
It had been a long week. He looked forward to a relaxing evening with Michelle. Earlier, whilst he had been waiting to see Superintendent Sloan, he had downloaded the menu of the restaurant they had decided on for their anniversary dinner, and had chosen what he would eat. Scallops with black pudding, followed by aged Black Angus rib-eye. Or possibly the rack of spring lamb.
He was salivating at the thought.
They were going by taxi, and he looked forward to having a few drinks. A glass or two of Prosecco, then a rich red wine – perhaps a Spanish Rioja.
Stopping in a line of traffic at a roundabout, he glanced down at his phone, which was plugged into the hands-free, and hit the speed-dial button.
Moments later, accelerating away from the roundabout, he heard the ringtone, followed by his wife’s voice.
‘Hi, love, how are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I’m on my way, baby. Satnav says ETA of 8.23.’
‘Brilliant!’
‘I love yooooooooooo!’
‘Drive safely.’
‘I thought I’d drive like one crazy sonofabitch craving his wife.’
‘You’re crazy!’
‘That’s why you love me, isn’t it?’
Suddenly, approaching a left curve at speed, he heard a massive bang right behind him, that resonated through the car, and simultaneously felt a violent jolt that shook every bone in his body. The steering wheel spun right, windmilling through his hands.
Shit! Shit! What had happened? What had he hit? Had someone hit him?
The car was lurching sideways, the seat moving beneath him.
The steering wheel was spinning the opposite way now.
Then it reversed again.
The Volvo was fishtailing; it slewed sideways, heading towards the crash barrier in the middle of the road, struck it and bounced off.
He fought the wheel and the car fishtailed left this time, then right, then left again, in a massive tank-slapper, hurtling now towards the side of the road, throwing him against the door.
Straight at a hedge.
And suddenly.
Oh shit.
The howling of tyres.
The hedge hurtling towards him.
He was no longer the driver, he was a passenger.
The hedge.
The tyres were biting.
Gripping.
He felt the door against his shoulder again. Shit, shit, shit. They were going over. Rolling. Rumbling. He saw tarmac. Heard drumming. Saw sky. Tarmac. Grass. Sky. Cracks in front of him. Cracked glass. Like spiders’ webs. Sky. Tarmac. Grass.
Jesus.
He was going to die.
Metallic rumbling.
Sky.
Rumbling.
/>
Then silence.
Complete silence. Just a ticking sound. He felt dazed. Lay still. Blinked.
I’m alive.
He was hanging from the seat belt.
‘Tim? Tim? Tim?’
His wife’s voice, faint and panicky. Where was she?
‘Tim, what’s happening, Tim? Tim? Are you all right, love – Tim?’
Above him. Was he hallucinating?
Then he realized. His mobile phone was lying on the roof lining. He tried to reach it but he was restrained by his seat belt and it was too far away. ‘I’m OK!’ he shouted, his voice sounding shaky as hell. ‘I’m OK, darling. Just a – bit of a—’
Need to get out, he thought, beginning to panic. In case of fire. Although he knew that cars rarely caught fire when they rolled, that was in movies only.
‘Darling, I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes,’ he shouted, fumbling for the seat-belt catch. Then he stopped. Idiot! Do not release it.
He’d seen people needlessly paralysed after roll-over accidents because they panicked, unclipped their belts and dropped six inches onto their heads, breaking their necks in the worst place.
He heard the ticking again. A steady tick-tick-tick.
The fuel pump. He reached across and turned the ignition off. Then he raised his right hand and braced himself against the roof of the car. Only when he was confident he was taking his weight did he fumble for the catch with his left hand and pop it. Then, as he gently lowered himself down onto the roof, he heard his wife’s voice again. ‘Tim? Can you hear me? Tim?’
He saw figures, through the side windows, running towards him.
‘Just had a bit of a shunt, darling,’ he called out. ‘I’m fine, never been better!’
A young man was kneeling down, tugging the driver’s door open. A middle-aged woman right behind him stooped down and peered in, with a concerned expression. ‘I’m a First Responder from Hassocks,’ she said in a commanding voice. ‘Are you injured?’
‘I – I don’t think so.’ Something was sticking into his chest, a sharp, painful object like a pointed stick.
‘Don’t try to move,’ she said. ‘There’s an ambulance on its way.’
He wriggled, checking he could move his toes, legs, fingers. ‘I’m fine, I don’t need an ambulance – I’ve got to get to London – my wife – it’s our anniversary.’
‘Don’t even think about it. You are not moving, young man.’
As he tried to move he cried out in pain as the stick jabbed his chest again. Except it wasn’t a stick, he recognized this pain, he’d had it before after being kicked in the chest during a rugby game. It was a broken rib sticking into his chest.
He heard a siren, approaching rapidly.
Outside, he heard a gruff male voice, sounding very indignant. ‘I saw it! Couldn’t believe my eyes. He rammed him, deliberately, he did! You know, it was like in the movies, unbelievable. I nearly went smack into him myself.’
The siren stopped suddenly. He heard footsteps and then a male voice asking, ‘Is anyone injured?’ and a female voice calling out, ‘Are there any witnesses?’
Moments later a Road Policing Unit officer in a yellow fluorescent jacket peered inside. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ she asked.
‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine, I think. May have bust a rib.’
‘We’ll get you checked over.’
‘I’m a police officer,’ Weatherley said.
‘You are?’
‘With the Met.’
‘Well, that’s a bit of a coincidence!’ Sharka DuBois said. ‘You’re my second copper in two days!’
‘I’m very happy for you,’ Weatherley replied.
98
Saturday 30 April
Grace sat quietly in his office, pondering the words of the Super Recognizer’s text.
Roy, you asked me to be discreet, which is why I said nothing after the meeting. Call me as soon as you are alone in the office.
He thought back over Exton’s behaviour recently; the coincidence of him being in the vicinity of the dead woman’s flat for days before and on the night of her death; the GoPro memory card delivered to the Forensic Unit with nothing on it – presumably wiped clean or replaced with a blank; the GoPro found in his glove box.
But Weatherley said the image of the man leaving the flat was not Exton. So who was it? A different Sussex police officer?
Who?
Hopefully, Weatherley had made a mistake. The image was terrible, blurred by the rain, how could anyone make a positive ID from that? He appreciated he did not have Super Recognizer skills, but all he could have said, if giving evidence in a court of law, was that the figure in the video entering and leaving the apartment block was of a similar height to DS Exton. Nothing else.
Perhaps when Weatherley examined the footage in the morning, he’d come to the same conclusion, he thought. He went through his team members who were around the same height as Exton. Guy? Jack? Donald? Kevin? Then he was interrupted by his mobile phone ringing. It was Ray Packham, sounding deeply on edge.
‘Roy,’ he said. ‘I’m up at the HTCU offices in Haywards Heath and we’ve got Lorna Belling’s laptop up and running. There’s something you need to see on this.’
‘Right, what?’
‘This is very sensitive, Roy. Very sensitive. I don’t want to risk talking about it over the phone.’
‘Can you email anything to me?’
‘No, too risky. I’ll bring it myself. Where are you at the moment?’
‘In my office.’
‘You need to see this right away, but we need to be private.’
‘We can be private in my office.’
‘Too risky, Roy.’
‘Ray, just what the hell do you have?’
‘Believe me, Roy, I have something I do not think you’re expecting.’
Grace turned and peered through the window. It was nearly dark outside.
‘Ray, what about we meet outside the main gates?’
‘No, too close.’
The man was sounding scared, he realized. Shit, what did he have? ‘Ray, what about the Tesco Superstore – on the edge of the industrial estate. Meet in the car park there?’
‘Good plan.’
‘When you enter it, go to the far side and turn left, and drive as far as you can go. Remind me, what car are you in?’
‘An Audi Q3, black.’
‘I’ll be in a plain Mondeo estate, I’ll wait for you there.’
‘I’ll be half an hour – hopefully less. Oh and listen, Roy, don’t say a word to anyone, OK?’
Hesitantly, he replied, ‘OK.’
Then he ended the call with his mind on fire. What was Packham about to reveal that was too risky to bring in to the Police HQ? Ordinarily he would have spoken to the one person he did totally and utterly trust, Glenn Branson, but he was in Portsmouth right now with Exton. He decided Batchelor, as his deputy, should be notified that they might be about to get a major development. He dialled the number, but it went to voicemail. He left a message asking the DI to call him back very urgently.
Then he texted Cleo to say he did not know when he would be home and would update her in an hour, picked up his car keys and headed outside.
99
Saturday 30 April
I can’t see a damned thing through the windscreen. It’s all blurry, like it’s covered in rainwater, like that video of the guy walking down the street and in and out of Lorna Belling’s apartment building.
I can’t see anything and it’s only raining very lightly. My eyes won’t focus. Nothing will focus. This is the problem with Natural Selection or whatever you want to call it. We’ve evolved all wrong, we’ve not kept pace biologically with the way we’ve evolved sociologically. Go back to our hunter-gatherer days, if you suddenly found yourself face-to-face with a sabre-toothed tiger, your adrenaline would kick in, pumping into your veins to enable you to run like the wind. But if you don’t burn that stuff off by running, it makes
you all jittery, muzzes your brain, stops your eyes from focusing properly.
We have different kinds of terror now, like being confronted by the VAT inspector, where the response we need is to remain calm, level-headed, highly focused. But still the damned adrenaline kicks in – or in my case, right now, kicks off.
It didn’t let me focus.
I got too anxious and blew it.
I should have waited for that damned detective from the Met, the Super Recognizer, to have got onto the M23 motorway, where he’d have been driving eighty, maybe ninety miles per hour, as he was in a hurry. And it would have been fully dark, half an hour, on from now. I was impatient, picked him off in a line of traffic, he was only doing fifty-five, maybe sixty. Did the classic car-chase manoeuvre, tapping him with the front of my car, the heavy part where the engine is, at the lightest point of his, behind the rear wheels. Knocked him sideways, then he rolled, I saw it in my mirror. Nice barrel rolls. But not enough. He might survive.
If I’d hit him at higher speed on the motorway and he’d flipped and barrel-rolled at eighty, that would pretty likely have been goodnight.
Now I don’t know where the hell I am. Where to go? He knows. Which means Roy Grace is going to know – if Weatherley lives.
I’m just not thinking straight.
I haven’t thought straight since April 20th, since –
Since –
Since Lorna Belling turned out her lights.
Maybe I turned them out.
Or maybe I didn’t.
The Super Recognizer knows who turned them out. He saw. He recognized.
This must be what hell feels like.
When everyone you know and love and respect is about to find out you’ve done a terrible thing – the worst thing a human being can do – and you’re going to lose everything.
This car needs fuel, I’m going to have to stop soon at a petrol station and be careful where I position it so no one spots the damage. I’ll have to get out, fill up, then go inside and pay. The guy or the woman I hand the money to will probably smile, and ask if I want a receipt. He – or maybe she – won’t know they’ve just served a murderer – who, if DS Weatherley dies, will be defined as a multiple killer – until they read the papers or watch the news tomorrow, or perhaps the day after. Then they’ll be shocked, and one day they’ll tell their grandchildren. ‘You’ll never guess what grandpa/grandma did! I once served a murderer in a petrol station!’